Join debate on adding WSU football team

There are compelling reasons for and against Wichita State University reviving football and switching conferences – two of the provocative items president John Bardo put on the table last week with his announcement of a comprehensive review of athletics programs and facilities.

But it will be fun and productive just to imagine and debate the opportunities that big changes in WSU athletics might create. Such aspirational thinking is timely and good for Wichita, which is looking for ways to reverse its three-decades-long economic and demographic decline.

Whatever Bardo wants to do demands notice, of course, in part because he is so persuasive in bringing others along as he does it. Bardo comes up in every conversation about Wichita’s economic development and future because of his ambitious agenda for WSU’s Innovation Campus, research potential and technology transfer. A sociologist by training, he appreciates how WSU can help shape the city.

While a winning football team could improve enrollment, which Bardo wants to push to 22,000 from the current 15,000, is the price too much for WSU and its donor capacity?

The $13 million annual estimated cost of playing at the Football Bowl Subdivision level is daunting, given that the entire WSU athletic budget is now $18 million. Consider that David Beaty, the coach of the 0-12 team at the University of Kansas, has a base salary of $800,000 – and that WSU’s last football coach earned $57,000 in 1986.

When WSU dropped football that year, there were too many losses to overcome – of games, money and even lives. The team’s tragic plane crash in Colorado in 1970 had killed 31 people, including 14 players.

In the mid-1980s, rules violations in the football and basketball programs had made WSU the most penalized school in NCAA history.

As then-president Warren Armstrong ended the misery in early December 1986, he pointed to mounting financial problems and an apathetic public.

But the recent successes of men’s and women’s basketball and volleyball – and especially the Shocker men under coach Gregg Marshall, who took them to the 2013 Final Four – have people dreaming of more, including an alternative to the Missouri Valley Conference.

As great as it is that WSU has won the MVC’s All-Sports trophy for nine of the past 12 years, it may be time for a more challenging competitive environment.

The prospects of soccer and facilities upgrades, including luxury boxes at Charles Koch Arena and maybe a new football stadium, will all be considered in the review, which is being led by interim athletic director Darron Boatright.

The public needs to speak out and help inform what could be a yearlong review. Regarding football and otherwise, the focus should be not on the disappointments of the past but on how athletics can better benefit WSU and Wichita into the future.

This story was originally published December 12, 2015 at 6:06 PM with the headline "Join debate on adding WSU football team."